As she waited to take to the Britain's Got Talent stage last May, Emma Amelia Pearl Czikai had little doubt that her audition would be a memorable one.

"I do have the ability to move people," she told the ITV talent show. "People have cried when they have heard me sing."

In the event, though, the only tears that flowed were her own and the memories are far from happy.

Piers Morgan hit the buzzer before she had even completed the first line of the power ballad You Raise Me Up, as did Simon Cowell. The third judge, Amanda Holden, hung on until she reached the chorus.

Czikai is so aggrieved at her treatment – and in particular at what she sees as the programme's refusal to take into account a medical condition – that she has complained to the media regulator Ofcom and lodged a complaint of unfairness and discrimination with the employment tribunal.

The former nurse claims that her performance suffered as a result of cervical spine neuritis, which can cause head and shoulder pain and which affects her ability to hear her own singing voice in noisy environments such as the audition arena.

She told the judges that she believed the backing track was too loud when she performed – and that she was not used to the microphone provided.

She claims that the programme makers broke a promise to link the two programmes and were intent on making a joke out of her. "They knew at the time and they did all of that," she said. "I had an illness that affected me at the time and they knew that there was another broadcast that proved that I could sing."

Czikai said she was lodging her claim under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 as she believes her medically documented disabilities affected her audition.

She also maintains that Britain's Got Talent can be classed as her employer because the auditions were a process of elimination in which candidates competed for short-term employment contracts for a road show.

Although Ofcom did not uphold Czikai's claim that she was treated unfairly on the programme as broadcast, the employment tribunal yesterday confirmed that it had received a complaint against Britain's Got Talent and had given the programme makers 28 days to respond. The conciliation body, Acas, has also automatically become involved.

A spokeswoman for the tribunal said a judge would wait for a response from Britain's Got Talent before examining the claim and deciding whether it should proceed to a hearing, a case management discussion or a pre-hearing general review.

Czikai said she expected Cowell to be called to give evidence if her claim proceeds to a hearing.

A spokeswoman for Britain's Got Talent said: "We are aware of the matter and it's currently being considered by our lawyers."

Czikai's case was described by one employment law expert as "certainly an unusual claim".

According to Marcus Rowland, a partner with the media law firm Wiggin, Czikai's path will be littered with legal stumbling blocks. "The first obstacle she will need to overcome will be to persuade the tribunal that it has jurisdiction," he said. "If the tribunal allows the claim to go ahead and is satisfied that her medical condition is a disability within the meaning of the legislation, she might have better grounds to pursue it as a harassment claim."

Such a claim, he added, would require Czikai to demonstrate that she was "subjected to unwanted conduct for a reason which related to her disability which violated her dignity or created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for her".

Czikai herself is in no doubt as to the consequences of her audition. "My health and wellbeing has been damaged I have been going downhill quite markedly this year," she said. And whereas once she was in demand for charity events, "last year I had no phone calls at all".

The optimism of her audition boast – that Cowell would listen to her sing and then "go home and think 'I am so glad I met that woman' " – now seems sadly misplaced. Her relationship with the sharp-tongued svengali appears to have deteriorated from the chummily combative to the downright indignant. "Simon Cowell has accrued for himself too much power," she said. "He's getting more and more powerful and has too much control, just like Rupert Murdoch."

Exceptional tribunals

Climate change

• Tim Nicholson claims that he was sacked from his job at one of Britain's biggest property firms because of his philosophical beliefs in climate change. In November last year a judge decided that his views on the environment were so deeply held that they were entitled to the same protection as religious convictions, and ruled that an employment tribunal should hear his claim that he was sacked because of them.

Fashion

• In August last year a 22-year-old law student who accused Abercrombie & Fitch of "hiding" her in a stockroom at its London store because her prosthetic arm didn't fit with the firm's "look policy" won her case for wrongful dismissal against the US retail giant. Riam Dean was awarded £7,800 compensation for injury to her feelings, £1,077 for loss of earnings, and £136 damages.

Aviation

• In March last year a tribunal ruled that Thomas Cook Airline Services had acted fairly in sacking a pilot who allowed the footballer Robbie Savage to sit in the cockpit during a private charter flight. Pablo Mason was dismissed after permitting Savage on to the flightdeck as Blackburn Rovers flew back to Manchester from Finland after a Uefa Cup match in 2007. Mason told the tribunal he had not believed he was breaching security regulations.

Education

• In February 2006 a teacher who accused Prince Harry of cheating and claimed she ghost-wrote his A-level coursework was awarded £45,000 in damages. Sarah Forsyth, a former art teacher at Eton College, won her case for unfair dismissal against the school, during which she said she had written the text to accompany the paintings the prince submitted for his A-level art project.